Reminders for parents of kids in car / Raising alarms on babies in cars / Future gadgets to warn parents

Alan Gathright, Matthew B. Stannard, Chronicle Staff Writers

Published 4:00 am, Friday, June 7, 2002

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NASA scientists and automakers are developing high-tech alarms that will soon prevent tragedies like the death of a South San Francisco infant forgotten Wednesday inside an enclosed sport utility vehicle.

But while gadgets that will sound alarms to warn parents are a couple of years from market, child safety advocates say something as low-tech as a teddy bear or a bright wristband can remind harried parents their baby is dozing in a rear-facing child carrier in the back of the car.

"You can leave a teddy bear in the front passenger seat to remind you the baby's in the backseat," said Terrill Struttmann. He and his wife, Michele, co- founded the San Francisco child safety group Kids 'N Cars after their 2-year- old son, Harrison, was killed by a runaway van sent rolling by a toddler left unattended in the vehicle.

Another idea is to leave a brightly colored band on a child's car seat that a parent puts around his or her wrist when the baby's onboard, Struttmann said.

"Just let your co-workers know that if they see you at work with that wristband on, they should quickly ask where your child is," he said.

Circumstances like those involving the death of 5-month-old Kiana Sopko of South San Francisco are too painfully frequent, Struttmann said. The infant was the third child in the past week to die after being left in an overheated car. The others were in Chicago and Virginia.

Kiana died in the family's Ford Expedition after her grandfather somehow forgot to drop her at her baby sitter's house. The grandfather, Lonnie Earl Sopko, 60, was booked on charges of involuntary manslaughter and felony child abuse and is scheduled to be arraigned at 1:30 this afternoon in San Mateo County Superior Court.

A tragedy like this can happen to anyone, Struttmann said. "We've had NASA engineers, teachers and lawyers do this," he said.

A common theme, he said, is dads and moms with hectic work schedules who have a shakeup in their routine -- perhaps a change in who drops the child at day care -- that causes a parent to forget a baby sleeping in the backseat.

Despite warnings every summer about the hazards of leaving children in hot cars, at least 30 kids died nationwide last year from heat exposure while unattended in vehicles, according to the National SAFE KIDS Campaign and General Motors Corp.

After a 5-month-old San Martin boy died in a hot car last year, Jan Null, a former National Weather Service meteorologist who is now an adjunct professor at San Francisco State University, began studying how temperatures rise in closed vehicles.

Null was stunned by how fast the wireless thermometers shot up in his car on an 86-degree day -- the same temperature in South San Francisco on Wednesday, the day Kiana died. A shaded thermometer in the car reached 109 degrees in 10 minutes, then climbed to 119 in 20 minutes and 125 in 30 minutes,

he said. A thermometer in direct sun climbed to 141 degrees in just 10 minutes.

"One hundred nine would basically be a lethal temperature if you're left in there for an extended period of time," he said.

GM researchers are developing a supersensitive sensor that will cause an alarm to chirp if it detects the slightest movement of a child or pet in a vehicle after the driver exits.

"It can detect a baby's small chest rising and falling under a blanket in a rear-facing infant seat," said GM spokesman Terry Rhadigan.

The automaker plans to have the device in minivans and SUVs by mid-decade and later add it to all cars.

Meanwhile, three NASA scientists, motivated by a colleague who made the fatal mistake of leaving his child in a parked car at work, are seeking funding to produce a child-seat sensor that detects the weight of a child and sounds an alarm if the driver carries a key fob 15 feet from the car.

Kids 'N Cars official Jannette Fennell said parents should make a habit of having child care providers call them immediately if a child is absent without explanation. "In almost every one of these cases, that could have prevented the death of a young baby," Fennell said.

In Kiana's case, the regular sitter called the infant's mother early Wednesday afternoon to ask why the child had not arrived that morning. By the time an uncle found her in the SUV, it was too late.

The baby's distraught parents secluded themselves in their home Thursday, and family members declined comment. The grandfather was being held in a special observation unit at the Santa Clara County Jail because officials were concerned he might be depressed over the baby's death.

"Considering the tragedy and the magnitude of this crime he's accused of, we wanted to be sure he was getting all the adequate mental health support that he might need," said Bronwyn Hogan, public information officer for the San Mateo County Sheriff's Office.

Despite the current charges against Sopko, San Mateo County Chief Deputy District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe said Thursday that prosecutors have not decided what formal charges, if any, he will face.

"It's a tragedy for everybody," Wagstaffe said, "but those factors get considered in what appropriate sentence is imposed.

"As prosecutors, our job is to look at the facts, and if a crime has been committed, we charge it, because there is a young child whose life has been lost, and that never gets forgotten in our book."

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